Just when you think you've seen everything, you're gifted a still camera that saves images to compact discs. I had been aware of Sony's CD Mavica line of cameras for a while, and I had owned numerous floppy disk Mavicas, but using a CD Mavica for the first time was surreal nonetheless. There's something special about a camera with a whole optical drive in it. It reminds me a lot of a Discman.
I was fortunate enough to get mine for free with all of its accessories and several blank discs. My model is the MVC-CD400, and it was one of several CD-based Mavicas in Sony's lineup. This camera, in particular, dates back to around 2002.
The hardware is delightfully 2000s. The entire front panel, including its surprisingly bright LCD, folds out to reveal a compact optical drive. It reads 8-centimeter "mini" CDs. These are significantly smaller than normal CDs, and while the camera is bulky, it's still pretty portable.
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| This is definitely an instance of Sony over-engineering a product. |
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| Considering everything, it's impressive that this camera is as small as it is. |
This camera has no shortage of features either. It packs a 3x optical zoom lens, various manual shooting modes, and a mini USB port for transferring photos to a PC. And yes, it can even shoot video! Perhaps I'll have to try that someday... We shall see.
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| There are plenty of buttons on this camera, and it's reasonably intuitive to operate. |
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| This Mavica even has a hot shoe mount! |
At the heart of this camera is a 4-megapixel CCD sensor. Its output may not be particularly sharp or high-resolution, but it does have a very nice vintage quality about it. I think this mainly comes down to the color output, which has a beautiful, almost warm feel to it. It's a far cry from the colors that come out of most cameras today.
To fully experience the CD Mavica, I took it with me on a drive around my hometown and the surrounding countryside. Here are the photos I got on my little adventure:
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| In order to preserve those signature vintage digicam colors, these photos are unedited. |
As fun as using a camera with a CD drive can be, it can get very annoying. I won't go into detail on how the process of initializing, accessing, and finalizing the CDs works, but it's definitely clunky.
In the early 2000s, it made some sense to use CDs in cameras. CDs were way cheaper than flash media at the time. However, the concept seems very bizarre today. It is especially weird when you find yourself waiting for the camera to burn each photo to a disc. It's quite a long process. This probably isn't helped by the fact that my camera is old; ergo, the laser might be starting to wear out. Regardless, working with the CD Mavica can be an exercise in patience for sure.
Not that it matters to me. I love weird old garbage like this. What's interesting about the CD Mavica is that, like its floppy disk counterparts, it was a product that only made sense for a few brief years. Only a couple of years after this camera was made, SD card prices went down, and this Mavica became severely outdated. Tech truly moves at breakneck speed.
That said, even today, I feel like this camera is capable of some nice-looking pictures. It's funny how old things become cool again. Anyway, I hope you found this retrospective interesting, and thanks for reading! Have a good one.